


Not a victim of a victim’s life

by Teethteethteethteethteethteethteeth



Series: Danger Days: Year 10 [6]
Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: California (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Origin Story, Violence, jet is so fucking badass, uhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:49:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27417547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teethteethteethteethteethteethteeth/pseuds/Teethteethteethteethteethteethteeth
Summary: Jet Star escapes.
Series: Danger Days: Year 10 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1995169
Comments: 17
Kudos: 17





	Not a victim of a victim’s life

You’ve barely had the time to become a person when your world turns upside down, when you have half an hour to pack your bag and make it to the city line, half an hour before the Scarecrows bust down your door.

You've never learned to drive— BLI likes to keep its citizens sheltered, only exterminators need learn to drive. But you get in the car anyways, and it’s not too hard to drive straight forward. 

Whoever you’d stolen it from had left their shiny, white backup blasters in the glove compartment, and you use your free left hand to fire out the window as you swerve, barely avoiding a passing droid. It looks terrified, and you barely have the time to register the guilt before the city wall comes into view, the final tunnel yet to close. You accelerate anyways, your nerves getting the better of you. You clear the closing gate into the tunnel with minutes to spare, and in your haste, you make your first kill, not with a blaster, but with the bumper of your car, running down a Drac in sheer panic, feeling the soft body and the crunch of its bones beneath your wheels.

You keep going. 

You hit more Dracs, swerving, and some you even get with the blaster that you’ll claim as your own, the feeling of the recoil unsettling, yet oh so comforting in your hand. The tunnel stretches out through the wall of the city, almost a mile thick, until it isn't anymore and you've come through to the other side. You've come through to the desert. 

The sun blaring down on endless sand and pavement almost makes you stop, you almost choke on the vastness of the sky and the insignificance of you, and your one-kid massacre, the bodies you’ve left in your wake. But the urgency weighs on you like your foot weighs on the gas pedal, and so you speed on. 

You drive straight ahead all day long, and it’s long after dark by the time your car shakes, shudders, and dies, the gas gauge still half full. You don't know enough about cars to wonder whether the gauge is stuck or if its some other mechanical error. You just get out of the car, one blaster in your hand, and the other tucked awkwardly into the waistband if your pants, and you walk. 

Eventually, the road just disappears, whether it’s been worn away over time or just buried in the dunes is unclear. You keep walking, as straight ahead as you can figure, without any kind of landmarks to keep you on course. Your shoes sink with each step, and fill with sand, and eventually you let them fall off, weighed down by the sand. You continue on, the chill of the desert at night soaking through the bottoms of your socks. 

The moon is high in the sky by the time you see light in the distance. Your pace stays steady; there’s no need to waste energy and rush to what might me a mirage. You learned all about mirages, and all the other dangers of the desert, in school. A tactic to scare as many potential rebels as possible, to keep as many kids in line. You don’t realize it, though, not yet, and for months afterwards, you’ll be wary of quicksand, and carnivorous birds, and think every plant you see is poisonous, lethal to the touch. 

But for now, you press on, trudging forward to what turns out to be a small, domed metal (building?), surrounded for meters around by burning candles, wax dripping into the sand, as flowers and letters burn away. It’s a beautiful sight, the first colors you’ve ever seen, muted though they are by the darkness around them. 

You drift closer, equal parts wary and curious, sticking a finger into a flickering candle flame to see what the beautiful sight feels like. It burns, and you’ve jerked your hand away before the pain even registers in your mind. As you suck on your burnt finger to cool it, you learn your first lesson from the desert. 

What’s beautiful is also dangerous. 

But you press on, moving closer to the center of this strange little monument, treading carefully as candles and offerings grow denser in the surrounding meters. You’ve dropped your bag, maybe miles back, so you have nothing to hold onto but yourself, huddling down on your knees in front of the little structure. 

“I FORGIVE U,” the front reads, and you trace the words with your fingers as the events of the past day come rushing up to the forefront of your mind. You hadn’t had the chance to consider _needing_ forgiveness yet, but as you remember what you’d had to do to survive, your stomach turns, and you find yourself clinging to the words on the structure. Somebody forgives you, even if you can’t, yet. 

Eventually, however poetic it may be, to spend hours prone at the shrine to a Goddess you do not know, you have to move, shake the tension out of your muscles, and feel like a human again. Feel like a human for the first time in your life, maybe. 

You slump back, leaning against the little shrine, accidentally knocking over a candle. You pick it back up, light it again from the flame of another candle, and use the hot wax to re-mold it to the base. It burns on happily as if nothing had ever happened to it. You sit for a while longer, before noticing a plate of food left out, sitting by the structure. You move closer, and if you’d known what a frisbee was, you would have noticed that the plate is actually a frisbee. Regardless, there’s food on it and you are hungry. So you pull the frisbee into your lap and begin to eat the food left on it. 

You've never had anything like this, plain and a little chewy, but surprisingly full of flavor. The city food was always bland, always measured out in perfect portions taking into consideration your height and weight and projected growth charts, always measured slightly too small to keep you hungry. To keep you wanting. 

But this— fresh bread, you find out later— is the first real meal you’ve ever had on your own terms, the first homemade meal you’ve ever had. Even if it’s not for you, it’s yours, and you devour it with a hunger not based in the desire for food. 

And then you sleep, curled up at the base of the shrine all alone, but somehow less lonely than you’ve ever been. It’s perfect, your first night out in the desert, and you wouldn't trade it for the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Not pictured: Fun Ghoul stumbling over Jet the next morning, speedrunning confusion to ‘yoo new friend!’ and dragging Jet back to the diner  
> Leave a comment below, and come find me on tumblr @waishiwasthemoon-tonight!


End file.
